Happy Fiftieth, Maryland Federal Public Defenders

On Friday, October 18, I delivered a check to the videographer for the Maryland Federal Public Defenders’ 50th Anniversary Event held in the ceremonial courtroom at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. I figured I’d stay for the beginning of the program and slip out when I got the gist of the ceremony, which I assumed would follow the typical formula. I confess to some cynicism about these events because the usual script involves a lot of thanks to all those who helped the speaker but also high praise for those who are in a position to help the speaker in the future.

Well. Let’s just say the next two plus hours did not follow the script. The event was emceed by Judge James K. Bredar, a former Chief Judge and Federal Public Defender for the District, who kicked off the ceremony by reading the Sixth Amendment word for word. He then introduced the district’s first Federal Public Defender, Chuck Bernstein, who began by saying something like¹:

What was it like in the beginning? It was magnificent. It was magnificent. They paid us to kick stuff at prosecutors.² We’d have done it for free!

Bernstein remembered wistfully that “we used to win cases,” and by “win” he meant acquittal on all counts.³ He looked around the audience for confirmation and called out various alumni who had become luminaries of the Maryland bar in other positions, a theme that repeated itself throughout the ceremony.

The heart of the ceremony was three panel discussions featuring current and former personnel from all segments of the office. The first, titled “Evolution of the Office,” was moderated by Judge Paula Xinis, herself an office alumna. Carrie Corcoran explained what it was like to represent some 700 misdemeanor clients a year, while at the other end of the spectrum Julie Stelzig recounted the intense experience of representing clients in capital cases, including a recollection that two office personnel witnessed the last execution by the State of Maryland. I was reminded that onetime Maryland lawyer Thurgood Marshall was regarded as unusual among modern Supreme Court justices not only because he had tried many cases as a defense lawyer, but because at least one of them was a capital case that he lost.⁴ That’s bound to change your perspective wherever you serve. 

The event reached an emotional apogee during the second panel, titled “Client Reflections on the Office,” in which current federal defenders Paresh Patel and Sapna Mirchandani movingly described the tribulations of representing indigent clients in an era when the national mood evolved from “tough on crime” to “maybe that was a little too tough.” The panel included two office clients who served many years in prison for drug offenses and were ultimately released with the office’s help, chiefly Mirchandani’s. The first panelist, a 79 year old woman who had been sentenced to 400 months incarceration for 15 months of transporting illegal drugs, promptly thanked her mother, who at 97 was seated in the audience. The client told a priceless anecdote about her sentencing, where her mother basically told the prosecutor that 400 months was a long time but not so long that she wouldn’t live to see her daughter released from prison. And so she did, with the help of the office.

The second client was a man born into a Bronx community that had very few employment options other than “seller, illicit drugs,” a position he reluctantly accepted. He spoke movingly about trying to raise three young children from inside a prison cell. His story spoke to me as I too was born in the Bronx, probably a few years before him, and I too have grown children roughly the age of his. How fortuitous that my parents, with much greater opportunities, left the Bronx when I was very young. 

The last panel was “Reflections from Alumni” moderated by another office alumna, Judge Deborah L. Boardman. Pressed for time, the panelists gave short and pithy responses to Judge Boardman’s questions about how the office had affected their subsequent careers, and they are all worth observing. But for me the takeaway was when Judge Boardman extemporaneously answered the exact question that was on my mind and probably many others: why so many people were talking about current Federal Public Defender James Wyda, who was seated in the audience a respectful distance from the panelists but whose name was not on the program (except, by alphabetic accident, as the very last name in a list of current office personnel). She observed that no responsible ceremony of the office would omit Wyda from the program except one orchestrated by Wyda himself, which is exactly what had happened. Judge Bredar did manage to drag Wyda up at the end but, true to form, he kept his unplanned remarks very brief and focused on others. 

Ironically, the idea for the event was formulated by a long-time prosecutor, Jefferson Gray, who also serves as the president of the Court’s Historical Society.⁵ It must have been odd for Jeff and other prosecutors to sit through the ceremony since their side of the adversary system took a lot of criticism, although none of it personalized. One of the panelists, longtime federal defender John Chamble, credibly explained that the two offices fought tenaciously inside the courtroom but not outside, which left room for professional plea negotiations in the many cases that called for them. And several other panelists noted gratefully that the U.S. Attorney’s Office had consented to compassionate release motions in some extraordinary cases.

Perhaps the event could have presented a fourth panel, titled “Reflections from Non-Alumni,” which would have presented people like me whose applications to the office were rejected. I promise I would not be bitter, as it was so long ago I don’t remember the circumstances or even if I’d have accepted an offer had one been tendered. Sitting through the remarkable ceremony, however, impelled me to reflect on the road not taken. All the panelists and moderators expressed a passion for the work and a camaraderie in the office that many lawyers never experience. That the office has spawned so many stellar careers is a testament to its superb leadership, its talented and hard-working staff and, most important of all, its very human but often transcendently inspirational clients. 

You should watch the video if you get a chance. 

¹None of these quotes are verbatim. I did not take notes and I don’t yet have access to the video. I may fix the quotations when the video becomes available; in the interim I apologize for any errors. 

²He might have said “preppies” rather than “prosecutors,” but either one worked in my mind. 

³That reminded me of my criminal procedure class some 35 years ago when adjunct professor Joseph L. Evans—who attended the ceremony and received multiple shoutouts—told some anecdote about a case he’d won and then, looking out at his inexperienced audience, said something like “let me explain what a defense lawyer means when he says he ‘won’ a federal criminal trial; it’s not ‘acquittal on all counts.’”

⁴See also Lyons v. Oklahoma, 233 U.S. 596 (1944). 

⁵I am the secretary-treasurer of the Historical Society, which means I write checks to videographers for court-related historical events.